Overpopulation: Myth or Truth.

At the height of the lockdown, I found this really awesome group of people from all over the world who share ideas and experiences on how individuals and communities can live more sustainably using the resources at their disposal. From the simple DIYs of making your own oat milk to the more complicated business of building houses from shipping containers and eating only what you grow and rear, the group has been a steady source of what I now call “DIS” AKA Daily Inspiration in Sustainability! ;)

Well in the last week or so, the eternal debate on what is a myth and what is hard fact truth in the race towards sustainability sprung up. One person made a list of over (15) things that they termed ‘myths’ which a large number of the population world over believes as truth.  As can be expected when challenging what is perceived as common knowledge, one of the ‘myths” blew up! It got so huge that it broke off into a stand-alone conversation with arguments and counter-arguments. Care to hazard a guess? It was none other than the conversation on overpopulation.

For decades, scientists and researchers have advised, cajoled and threaten the inevitable end of the world as we know it if the situation of the exploding population is not nipped in the bud. As a child, I remember feeling grateful that I was born in Nigeria after hearing stories about a certain country restricting families to only 1 child as any “extras” would be taken away by the government forever. These ever-growing concerns about overpopulation resulted in the development of several birth control methods which are so easily accessible that they are gotten for next to nothing in many countries.

Reading through hundreds of very impassioned comments, I was able to highlight the most prominent thoughts in favour of overpopulation as a myth:

-          The concept of “overpopulation” is a myth coined by corporations to sell their products.

-          Lots of products being produced go to waste even before hitting the shelves, and again before it reaches the final consumer so it has to be a myth.

-          A small family of say 4 in a developed country will consume more resources and leave a higher carbon footprint than a family of say 12 in a developing country, so the use of the term “overpopulation” is merely a distraction from consumerism and so it gets the myth stamp.

Those who believed overpopulation to be true put forward the following

-          The more people there are on earth, the more they consume and the quicker earth’s finite resources are depleted as evidenced with recent food shortages and famines. Simple Math!

-          Others insist that with the current rate of over-population; at least 1 billion people will have to exit the earth within the same time period, to “help” the earth or it is doomed. Suggestions were even made for a worldwide, only-the-strongest-DIYers-survive contest to eliminate the weak links!

All the arguments and counter-arguments pointed to one thing: “If the number of people on earth and the number of resources consumed are not at par, there is a problem.”

One thing that people in developing and developed countries seem to have in common is the need to become richer. This pursuit of riches is usually for no other reason than so that they too can consume more and not bother about the repercussions because waste doesn’t affect them or at least it affects them less. Therein lies the problem. Whether you are team “consumerism” or team “over-population”, the economic model of create-use-throwaway is built to be wasteful.

With so many varying, yet true opinions, one may ask, “Is there a solution to this?”

Personally, I do not think there is one single solution per se, because the problem of people outweighing resources is dependent on so many dynamic variables that may not be exhausted in a single article. The one suggestion I have involves a consistent re-orientation of the human mind. The population is definitely correlated with environmental impact and to create a sustained, positive impact we must work to change the mind-set in multiple cultures across the world in the next generation – but we must start today because tomorrow never comes.

We must live, breathe, teach and embody the fundamental Rs of sustainability by Reducing consumption and waste, Reusing what you have and Recycling what is left.

If people only took what they needed, Mother Earth could definitely handle more humans.